Resistance is futile

"Resistance is futile" is one of two catchphrases used by the Borg in the Star Trek franchise, spoken with the sort of ominous finality the Borg are well-known for. They leave no room for options, and they know that they have overwhelming force on their side. They are powerful, adaptable, and relentless, and they will win in the end, no matter how long it ultimately takes or how many temporary setbacks they encounter. They will never give up, they will adapt to defeat any weapon or tactic used against them, and they will eventually overwhelm and conquer.

Despite its immediate association with the Borg, they are not the first to use the phrase, and they didn't even use it themselves until their second on-screen appearance. In their first appearance, Q Who? (1989), the closest they come is "If you defend yourselves, you will be punished." It's not until The Best of Both Worlds, Part I (1990) that they tell Picard "Resistance is futile" before they implant the cybernetic parts that turn him into one of them. Picard, now Locutus, then passes the message on to the USS Enterprise-D.

Wikipedia reports that the exact phrase was first used in Space: 1999 in 1977, and later in an episode of Doctor Who in 1983. Long before then, however, the remarkably similar phrases "resistance is useless" † and "to resist is futile" were used by the Doctor Who enemies the Cybermen (themselves in some ways similar to the Borg) as far back as 1967. Indeed even before that, the Daleks told The Doctor that "resistance is useless" in 1964's The Dalek Invasion of Earth‡. Despite that, however, the Borg were clearly the most popular sci-fi villains to have used it and brought the phrase into the mainstream, going so far as to use it as the tagline for Star Trek: First Contact.

† XWiz and The Custodian point out that "RESISTANCE IS USELESS!" was also the catchphrase of the Vogons of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This was likely a direct reference to the Doctor Who villains, as Douglas Adams was involved with Doctor Who around the time THGttG made its first appearance as a radio play in 1978.

Alas, the very unstoppable nature of the Borg was their own undoing, at least so far as the Star Trek franchise was concerned. Because resistance was, in fact, futile, the writing staff must have had one heck of a time coming up with ways to defeat them, and they only appeared in a half-dozen episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (four if you consider that two of them were two-part episodes).

For their first big-screen appearance in Star Trek: First Contact, the Borg were changed dramatically, with the addition of nano-robot injections that quickly converted victims into more Borg and the ridiculous Borg Queen, which I feel defeated the entire purpose of the robust, massively redundant Borg organization and gave them a heart to stab at. Further appearances in Star Trek: Voyager almost reduced them to a joke, as a single, lost Federation starship got the better of them time and time again. Resistance didn't turn out to be quite so futile after all.

Some philosophers and spritual teachers say that this is the root of all suffering. Some even go so far as to say it's the esoteric cause of physical ailment as well. I'm not going to get into that. I'm only going to speak from a personal, anecdotal, psychological point of view.

Regardless of whether you believe in the objective existence of the world around you, there is no denying that YOUR experience of reality is entirely and by definition a subjective one. Your perception of what you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel... those perceptions are shaped over time by your previous experience and neuro-conditioning. Spend a few hours at a landfill and you won't even smell it anymore. Spend some time working under a noisy fan or machine, and before long its repetitive sounds fade into non-existence. Our brains take in sensory input and process it into experience, and consequently thoughts and feelings, which are all shaped by our previous conditioning.

Is this why we humans have such difficulty being open to ideas about reality that dissonate with our own sensory input? Maybe. But just maybe, how things SEEM to be aren't really how they actually ARE. The universe is hard at work all around us, flowing and swirling like air currents on both a cosmic and an infinitesimal scale, in all it's marvelous complexity. Change is the only constant. With all this uncontrollable and unfathomable flux, why do we tend to hold so tightly to feelings and ideas of how things should be?

"That asshole cut me off. He should never have done that."

"Why haven't I found love yet? I should be married by now."

Something deep inside our egocentric brains generates these negative thoughts and feelings, this inner resistance to the state of reality at this moment. I mean, every particle in the universe IS already where it IS. All energy potentials are already in their current state. You'd be insane to believe otherwise. No amount of negative emotion or action or self pity can undo what is already done. You don't have to feel resignation, but don't look backward wishing things had been different. Take a breath. Accept that what already is, is. Find peace with the current moment. Then you can move forward.